As I wrote in a previous blog, my wife has a new job that starts a week on Monday and we have to move quickly; by the same day, so finding somewhere to live was a top priority and we have now found a place, not the ideal place we wanted but rental costs plus higher utility costs meant we had to compromise. We have rented a two bedroom condo with a downstairs family room which will be used as a third bedroom, we needed find somewhere where our 2 1/2 year old daughter can have her own room and this condo works. Best of all, it’s even closer to Conner’s school, so we don’t have to worry about switching schools, the condo is literally across the road from where we live now.
The condo is listed at 950 sqft; but seems to be bigger that that, I think it’s closer to 1100 sqft, which means the bedrooms are smaller but the overall finish is very good, all modern appliances and comes with washing machine and dryer so that saves us $1000 off the bat! There are two full bathrooms, one downstairs and one upstairs. The kitchen isn’t the biggest but it’s workable, the utility room is next to the kitchen with a large storage cupboard for food and other kitchen stuff.
Because we are effectively downsizing; we are using the opportunity to get rid of some of our old battered furniture and buying new more modern and space efficient furniture. What we have right now is basically hand me downs from my mother-in-law, which is 80s retro style, solid furniture but it’s large and cumbersome. A new dining room table and chairs, a couple of five shelf bookcases, a new dresser for my son; his current one is battered and bruised, missing handles and whatnot; along with some area rugs for the wooden floors and misc stuff are all on the shopping list before Friday.
The only issue I can see is setting up my home theatre system as the family room downstairs will be used as a bedroom, I have to squeeze a 10ft by 7ft sectional corner sofa, coffee table, 40in TV cabinet, five large speakers and a subwoofer in a room that is roughly 11ft by 10ft. But overall I can’t complain, it’s less than $800 per month; includes trash and outside grounds care, we just pay, electricity, gas and water, plus Internet. We are set to move in next Saturday, the 23rd of June!